


Stitches

by GingerSnappish



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Creeping Horror, Hux Is In Over His Head, M/M, Poetry is involved, Tailor!AU, Triptych, kylo is an eldritch selkie thing, set in the 1800s, so is journaling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:27:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24788482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerSnappish/pseuds/GingerSnappish
Summary: Hux's life as a tailor's apprentice is appallingly mundane right up until the day he receives a mysterious letter...
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 11
Kudos: 37





	1. Four 'til midnight

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a response to a writing class prompt. The goal was to tell the same story in three different forms. The first is poetry, the second is prose, the third is a journal entry. 
> 
> The lovely and talented Monster did an amazing piece of art for this fic, which I continue to be blown away by! 
> 
> https://twitter.com/ArsTyrannus/status/1273521863990312960

He picks out stitches in the lamplight  
Feigning ignorance  
To the heaviness upon his back  
The breeze from the window brushes his shoulder  
It is four minutes ‘til midnight  
There are not many stitches left

He does not glance to his left  
He stays firmly in his puddle of lamplight  
The seconds tick on toward midnight  
They say bliss lies in ignorance  
No on is standing at his shoulder  
The window remains unopened at his back

His mind drifts, back  
To when he ran away from home, to when he left  
The memory manifests as an ache in his shoulder  
He continues to pick stitches in the lamplight  
Is bliss found in ignorance?  
The time is getting on for midnight

He has until midnight  
To unpick these stitches, to put it back  
Bliss is not ignorance  
There are only four stitches left  
There is a flicker in the lamplight  
Something only just barely does not touch his shoulder

Something touches his shoulder  
It is not yet midnight  
There are two shadows on the floor in the lamplight  
He looks back  
He looks left  
There is no sense anymore in ignorance

What is ignorance?  
There is no sense in ignoring the hand on his shoulder  
The shadow bleeding back on the floor to his left  
It is four seconds ‘til midnight  
There is someone at his back  
He ventures, “Come into the lamplight”

He loses the last of his ignorance, there in the circle of weak lamplight.  
Someone with black hair-eyes-soul touches his shoulder, his back.  
Nothing of his old life is now left. It is long past midnight.


	2. The lamplight is weak

Hux’s fingers do not tremble as he unpicks the delicate stitching on the hem of the black cloak. He is steady, has always been steady. He has a knack for delicate handwork, it was part of the reason he was able to obtain a position as a tailor’s apprentice in the first place. He unpicks the same stitch twice. A third time. Any shaking on his part is incidental. An anomaly.   
Hux does.   
Not.   
Tremble. 

The lamplight is weak, casting a tepid circle of yellow around him that flickers and dies rapidly as it recedes into the black. His shadow is a ghoulish puddle of amorphous ink on the unvarnished floorboards. He does not glance left or right. If he did, if he looked too long, he might see two shadows cast on the floor, bleeding into one another at their edges. Ridiculous. Hux is alone and the lamplight flickers, the lamp running low on oil. 

According to the small carriage clock on his desk, it is four minutes ‘til midnight .

Although it is high summer, his cramped attic room borders on chilly. A light breeze tickles the back of his neck for a moment. It smells of salt brine and something vaguely more unpleasant, the sort of smell that might be found under a wharf at low tide. It is only the night wind, he tells himself, blowing in off the sea. He firmly ignores the simultaneous fact that the window is shut tight.

The dark material of the cloak is thick, so soft it is almost oily. There is a front and a back to it, a knap. Touch it the right way and it has the feel of finest velvet. It’s the sort of material that is almost sacrilegious to work with, altering it to the constraints of a garment akin to sin. That is part of the reason, Hux thinks, that he is un-doing all this careful silk stitching.

He keeps unpicking, bone needle quick, fingers as sure as they can be at this hour, in this room, in the watery lamplight. The hem is the last of it, all the other seams already undone. Not a single run, or rip, no damage. Hux prides himself on his workmanship. The lamp flares and for a moment Hux thinks he can see a faint pattern of irregular spots on the charcoal velveteen and then it is gone in the dimness. He’s never worked with a material like it. 

It is now three minutes ‘til midnight.

Hux’s mind wanders. He blames the hour. The bewitching hour some call it. It reminds him of the time he ran away from home, ran from the threats and beatings and worse, shoulder still sore where he popped it back into place before climbing out his bedroom window and stealing away, not a penny to his name. The town clock had rung out midnight as he’d gone.   
He has yet to regret it.

He has yet to regret anything in his life, really, except perhaps waiting so long to run away. Hux is a very definite sort of person. He revels in responsibility for everything he does, says, feels. He’s his own man. He likes it that way. He’s been warned that this, this he may come to regret. Hux doesn’t think so, though. He continues with his work.

Two minutes ‘til midnight.

The lamp must really be very close to dying now. The light flickers, casting strange shadows across his work, his hands. 

He keeps his eyes focused on his task. 

The breeze is there again, tickling the fine hairs at the nape of his neck.

There is a heavy feeling across his shoulders, the kind that can only result from the anticipation of only-just-barely-not touching something.

One minute.   
Sixty seconds.   
Tick.   
Tick.   
Tick. 

There are four stitches left. 

Fifty-seven seconds.   
Fifty six-

“Don’t.”

Hux stops.

The breeze is still. There is another breath echoing his own. There is a mouth, a nose, somewhere very close to his own ear. 

A touch as faint as starlight on waves laps at his shoulder.

He glances to the side, not moving his head. Two shadows grow from one another on the floor. 

“Will you…come into the light?” he ventures.

The carriage clock chimes gently midnight, but Hux does not hear it. 

He is now far too distracted with black hair and blacker eyes and black-clawed hands running oh-so-gently his back, soothing his nerves away, pulling him in.   
He is lost.


	3. June, 1843

June 21, 1843

Today was something of a revelation. I worked in my spare time all day, as well I plan to continue into the evening, unpicking Master-Tailor Sloane’s fine stitching on that most lovely of cloaks, lately commissioned by Lord Snoke. It had come recently to my attention that the fabric from which the garment in question was constructed was not meant for such a fate. In fact, it has since become apparent that is not so much fabric, as a miraculous material in it’s own singular class. Nor is it an item meant to be possessed at all. It belongs, in as much as it can be owned, to a young man name of Mister Ren.

But perhaps I should start at the beginning. 

I received, in the previous afternoon’s post, a most desperate letter from a gentleman calling himself Kylo Ren. In it, he claimed ownership, not so much of the new cloak commissioned by Lord Snoke, but of the single, large swath of material from which it was constructed. He put forward the notion that it was tantamount to his most precious of possessions and was forcibly taken from him. Furthermore, the letter stated that Mister Ren’s continued health, happiness, and even life, were in great jeopardy should said item not be returned to him with the utmost urgency. He offered for the return of it, the unheard of princely sum of 4000 gold pieces or alternately, a favor of an unspecified and indefinite nature. 

I felt most strongly that we should not deliver our latest commission to Lord Snoke, should the fabric from which it had been made being stolen. The 1000 pieces of gold is no small boon either, for anything that appreciably enables me to move farther from my town of origin is to me of paramount importance.

Therefore, I took the extraordinary step of appropriating the garment from the finishing rack and unpicking the seams to reform the substance into its original singular state. I have taken it upon myself to write back to Mister Ren, care of his lodging mistress, to say that for the promised sum, I will meet him at half past midnight to exchange his goods for money.

I do hope, for my sake as well as his own that he comes through, and promptly, as I cannot imagine what will befall me should the theft and subsequent destruction of work be discovered and attributed to my person. A sum in the amount promised, however is well worth the risk.

  
June 22, 1843

Having met Mister Ren last evening, I can say only that I opted instead for the favor and am glad of it.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you got this far, thank you for giving my work a chance and reading!!!


End file.
